


Good Ones, Lost Ones

by inbox



Series: Take Your Shot [7]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fallout Kink Meme, Food, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Game(s), Shotgunning, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 18:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4315470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcade Gannon has assumed a new identity and a new life after fleeing the Mojave as a wanted war criminal ten years previous. His tenuous grasp on his new normal is upset when he has the misfortune of running into the last person he ever wanted to see again: Craig Boone.</p>
<p>The last part of the Take Your Shot series, set ten years after 'The End'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The bar was packed with people, a seething heaving mass of humanity sweating and shouting and moving in eddies and swirls of crushing, cloying contact. Every few minutes someone shoved someone else, someone shouted, someone threatened to take it outside. It was loud, hot and cramped, the air stale and damp, reeking of cigarettes and the sweat of a hundred humans moving in close proximity.  
  
Arcade Gannon was enjoying himself immensely.  
  
There wasn't much in the way of entertainment in New Canaan. There was a lovely church and an excellently maintained library and once you got past the walls of the city properly there was even a rather charming garden, cool even under the late August sun. Sightseeing and gardens tended to lose their appeal after the fourth straight day of visiting for even the most devoted fan, and considering that Arcade had been in New Canaan for two weeks now, he had more than had his fill of polite sightseeing. If pressed he would admit that he was edging beyond the outliers for lack of human contact, even ones as stunted as his own.  
  
He'd made the executive decision to leave the quiet confines of the city gates once he found himself looking over the edge of his magazine and speculatively eyeing the jugs of clear spirit he'd ordered last week. After all, once a man started thinking about mixing a drink from surgical-grade alcohol he was either desperately bored or on the fast track to becoming a drunk with very expensive taste.

And, so, he made the decision to go out and get as pleasantly drunk as possible. It was a good choice, he felt. Very sensible. Very good for his mental health and well-being.   
  
Someone bumped his elbow and his drink went flying, cheap red wine dripping over his fingers. He bit back his first response to snap at the whip of a girl with a spray of freckles across her nose and a mark of a healer branded into her arm, instead accepting with good grace her offer of a replacement glass. Someone else cannoned into him and she rolled her eyes, ducking under his elbow and getting as far out of the crush as possible.  
  
“You're not having much luck tonight, huh?”  
  
His second assailant put his hands up in an apologetic gesture when Arcade pinned him with the kind of glare that makes schoolboys cringe and husbands shuffle their feet. There was a mumbled  _sorry, sorry, didn't mean to make a thing of it_  and he could hear the tribal girl giggling as she leaned against the bar, her elbows planted firmly into the damp bar runner.

“Trust me, I rarely have a good run of luck at the best of times.” He drained the dregs of his wine and waggled his glass in the universal motion for 'it's your shout'.  
  
"I'm Katie," she shouted over the din after a tired-looking bartender finally delivered their drinks.  
  
"John," he mouthed back, the assumed name tasting familiar and honest after so many years. Their glasses made a satisfying clink as she proposed a sardonic toast –  _to overcrowded bars and personal space_  – and for the sake of anyone else to talk to, they chatted to each other.   
  
"So where are you from?" She stood in the lee of his bulk, avoiding the eye of a boisterous young shopboy who didn't seem to care all that much when Arcade had smoothly lied that she was his girlfriend.  _Sorry_ , he'd said wryly.  _Either you're not the girl for me or I'm not a very convincing boyfriend_. She'd just covered her mouth and shook her head, amusement playing at the corners of her eyes.  
  
"Great Plains. Way, way north." It's almost shameful how easy the lies tumble out these days. If only he'd learned the art of true deception years ago, he'd… well, he wouldn't be in possibly the only dive bar in Mormon territories killing an evening making conversation with a stranger. 

"If you think Canaan is bad, imagine what the nights are like in a cow town. Moonshine and Brahmin tipping, oh my."  
  
Katie laughed and swilled back the last of her drink. "I can imagine. My people grow corn. You don't know excitement until it's midwinter and there's nothing left to do but drink barely fermented mash. There's nothing like the chance of going blind to add a bit of excitement to a long night, I guess."   
  
She glanced around the bar and indicated that he should lean down so she could tell him something, her motions graced with all the subtlety that several beers on an empty stomach could give. "Look John, I don't know if you're into this at all - and you haven't tried a move on me all night so I'm gonna guess you are - but there's a guy on the other side of the bar who keeps staring at you. Like, _staring_ -staring."

Arcade snorted and resisted the urge to glance around. "Should I be flattered?"  
  
There was a pause as she looked around his arm, then made a so-so motion. "You could do better. I think he's balding."  
  
"Pass." He stood back up straight and pulled a face. "I'm too old and decrepit to turn my head for anything less than a seven out of ten."  
  
She grinned and tapped her caps on the bar, not even bothering to humour him about the crack about his age and state of being. "I'll save you the risk of catching his eye by covering your round. I owe you,  _boyfriend._ "  
  
He thanked her for her kindness and they fell back into small talk. "So you're a healer? Are you here for supplies? If so you're going to be waiting for weeks; I've already been here for a fortnight and I'm still waiting on half my order to get to me."

He rolled the stem of his glass between his fingers before taking a long drink. He was right at that point where he knew he could either tip into relaxed merriment or slink away with a crippling headache, and like hell he'd spend the night chewing a strip of willow bark and feeling sorry for himself.   
  
She shook her head. "Nothing like that. Waiting to join the next Followers group walking back west. I'd take one of the truck convoys but… caps are tight, y'know."  
  
"Trust me, I know. No one has two caps to rub together lately. It's taken me six months to scrape together the money to travel here and I didn't have anything more than a dufflebag. So, uh, what are your plans west? Fame and fortune? Skip New Reno, the place is a dive." He was nervously bullying for information and he knew it but honestly didn't care. Despite the instantaneous flicker of nervousness just at her mention of the Followers of the Apocalypse he was more than keen to press for gossip and news. The past six years up in the wilds of Wyoming had starved him of information about what was happening in the civilised world, and god knew he was sick of news that only involved grain prices and who was wounded today and  _John, it's calving season and we need you tonight_.  
  
"I'm going to study at their university there. Have you heard of it?" If she noticed his barely repressed nervous twitch, she didn't mention it. "The Followers outta New Canaan have been visiting with teaching material and last time they said I'd studied enough to go and train for surgery. I had two days to pack my bags and get moving." She patted at the brand on her arm and smiled happily. "No more practising on dogs and tying bandages on field hands. I can't wait."  
  
"It'll--" His throat felt thick and he immediately felt foolish for getting choked up about a school, and made a show of exclaiming that he'd swallowed his drink the wrong way. "--it'll be wonderful. A friend of mine studied there. Said it was one of the best times of his life."  
  
Her eyes flicked to the small wooden rod of Asclepius hanging from his neck but mercifully didn't press the point. "And now? Still practising?"  
  
"Still practising," he confirmed, fixing a smile to his face and trying to elevate his mood. It was a perfectly fine evening and he didn't want to ruin it just because some wounds still refused to knit together even after a decade of watching over his shoulder and seeing nothing but ghosts. "Still practising, still blessed with the worst bedside manners."

Arcade cut the conversation short by flagging the bartender and ordering another round for himself and his new friend. He glanced around the crush of people bellied up to the bar but no one was watching him. He shook his head, chiding himself for feeling so rattled.  
  
 _There's a guy on the other side of the bar who keeps staring at you._  
  
He thanked the bartender and turned around to pass Katie her terrible sweet agave concoction, twisting back to grab his own glass and interestedly scanning the crowd to find his mystery watcher.  
  
Arcade knew he was playing with a very loaded deck just by being out here past the walls at night. Hell, he was taking a big risk just by travelling into New Canaan. He'd stopped at the door of his cramped rented apartment only a few hours ago, mentally tallying the risks of someone, anyone, recognising him. NCR defectors, gossiping traders, Followers with long memories and bitter grudges, Rangers seeking a night of rest before spearing ever eastward... someone might be carrying the wanted lists that still carried his name and description, eager to pick up the generous bounty he knew still hung over his head. 

Then he'd shrugged and thought that ten years and the addition a nose repeatedly broken and badly reset, hair now more silver than gold, the kind of scruffy beard that would've caused Judah make all sorts of disapproving noises, so many small elements adding up to make him just different enough to maybe pass for someone else. That's what he'd hoped anyway, scuffing his boots a little before firmly locking his door and setting out into the night.   
  
 _You're being paranoid_ , he told himself, taking a sip of his wine and pulling a face as the slightly soured tannins caught at the back of his tongue. It was truly awful wine, but it was _cheap_ awful wine and he wasn't exactly a high dollar drunk these days.  _The chances are beyond remote, you told yourself that. It'd be the worst kind of cheap narrative gimmick and real life isn't a pulp cowboy novel._  
  
Arcade Gannon, John Hansen. No matter what name he travelled under, Arcade always had been awfully adept at proving himself catastrophically wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

If the whole situation wasn't the stuff of his worst dreams it might've been funny in a painful, black way. He was halfway through swallowing a mouthful of red wine when he accidentally caught the eye someone sitting half in shadow on the far side of the bar. He froze, cheap sharp wine on the edge of turning to vinegar sticking in his throat as his brain frantically paged back through a lifetime of faces, good and bad, before serving up a name that he hadn't thought about in years.  
  
Arcade always wondered what he'd do if this moment ever happened. If someone found him. If he let himself be found. Mostly he'd figured he'd melt away into a crowd and leave his assailant wondering where he'd gone, buying himself time to leave everything behind and run. If he had to fight, then he'd fight – he'd lived rough for a few years and learned enough about knives to be dangerous when cornered, and for quite a while he'd had no qualms about using the needle-sharp boning knife hanging from his belt to defend himself and his meagre belongings.  
  
Now that the moment actually happened, it turned out that all he'd do was silently choke down a mouthful of wine and lock up on the spot like a startled Bighorner calf. The part where his feet felt nailed to the floor and his thought processes degenerated into a scared stream of  _oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck_  was novel though. Unique. Terrifying. Definitely not on his list of fun ways to pass the night.  
  
He forced himself to take a deep shaky breath, and somewhere at the back of his senses he could hear Katie at his back, asking if he was all right.  _Oh, I'm fine_ , he thought, the taste of adrenaline like tin underneath his tongue.  _Just experiencing the unique sensation of blinding fear and paranoia topped of with bilious nausea. You know how it is._  He didn't grace her with a real answer, shaking off her concerned hand as she tried to gently spin him around.  
  
Across the bar, through the fug of smoke and still air, Craig Boone just stared back. Even after all this time Arcade could read his expression well enough to see the exact dawning moment when he, too, had matched a name to a face.  
  
Arcade didn't know or care who moved first. Boone was sliding off his chair as Arcade slammed his glass onto the counter, spinning on his heel and surging into the crowd. He elbowed past Katie, knocking her drink to the floor and almost sending her off her feet. His first instinct was to apologise and make sure she was all right, but the white noise and tunnel vision of sheer panic left him calling _sorry, I'm so sorry, good luck with your studies_ over his shoulder as he pushed his way through the scrum of people blocking the door.  
  
He burst into the warm night air with a lurch, shouldering through the worn screen door and misjudging the distance from sill to floorboard, unbalanced and unready. He took the steps two at a time, stumbling as he landed heavily in the street, his worn boots dangerously slippery on the aged concrete. Despite the late hour the street was still full of people, beers in their hands and cigarettes in their mouths. Their collective stare felt like arrows in his back as he sprinted down the broken road as fast as his legs could humanly carry him.

Arcade didn't know where he was running to, just that he wanted to be far, far away from the thud of running footsteps gaining on him. He swore as he tripped on a grate, aware that he was horribly winded and starting to slow down. Boone had always been better at running, at chasing things and being a wolf when he needed to be. Hunter vs hunted. 

The unbroken chain of  _fuckohfuckohfuck_  started up in Arcade's head again, the refrain a childish distraction from the bright white pain of stitch beginning to tear at his side.  
  
Boone shouted his name and Arcade found a renewed source of strength, all his focus on the rapidly approaching gap of an alleyway.  _Straight line speed vs sharp movements_ , he thought, and had a brief crisp image of waving his arms and chasing the milker yearlings away from the house as his neighbour doubled over with laughter. He silently promised he'd never make fun of living in a cow town ever again if he could just outpace Boone, slip back to his apartment and then fade away back to his small life. John Hansen wouldn't be running through the dirty outskirts of New Canaan with the threat of a firing squad at his back.

Arcade always suspected that the John Hansen part of him was an infinitely better person than the Arcade Gannon side, and this final indignity was perhaps concrete proof of that suspicion.  
  
_Why did I come here, why did I think it was safe, why do I have such poor impulse control, why is my judgement so bad, why did I take up smoking, why why why..._  
  
He rapidly changed direction, almost losing his footing on loose gravel as he darted into the dim mouth of the alleyway.   
  
“Gannon--” Boone sounded equally winded and furious, and far too close. “--Gannon, will you just fucking  _stop_...”  
  
Arcade thought his heart was going to thud out of his chest in terror when a lucky snatch landed Boone a handful of his shirt, jerking him off balance and sending him reeling into the wall. His elbow took the brunt of his weight and he staggered into the brickwork, eyes watering hard enough to blur his vision as he instinctively clutched at his arm.  
  
“Will you--” Boone braced a hand on his thigh as he sucked back great lungfuls of air, hauling back on Arcade's collar as he tensed up to run again, “--will you just stop? Just stop.”  
  
“Or what,” said Arcade, his voice cracking slightly. “You'll shoot me?”   
  
“Don't be stupid.”  
  
“I'm not being stupid. I'm  _panicking_. There's a difference.” He twisted out of Boone's grip and, before he could take more than a step, was neatly tripped by a nasty kick landing square and true at his ankle. He hit the ground hard, palms skidding into the gravel.  
  
“Swear to god,” said Boone, dragging his forearm across his face. “Why do you always have to make things so difficult?”  
  
Arcade tried to get back to his feet, his ankle painful enough to leave him on bended knee. If anyone was to pass by and glimpse down the damp dark alley, he supposed they could be mistaken for thinking he was proposing to Boone. The thought made him feel ill.

“I'd make some remark about the irony of that statement, but I'm guessing you still don't know what irony is.”  _Childish. Satisfying, but childish._  
  
“I've managed so far without it.” Boone stuck his hand out and, with a great deal of reluctance, Arcade took it, getting to his feet and limping to lean against the rough brick wall. He shook out the debris from his palms, tearing at the barked skin   
  
They stared at each other in uncomfortable silence. Arcade was tense, every muscle in his body coiled up like a spring and ready to flee. Out of all the scenarios passing through his over-active imagination, at no point had he predicted awkward silence. A pistol at the nape of his neck, yes. Standing in an alley and listening to the tinny strains of music drifting from down the street, no.  
  
Boone broke the stalemate first, shrugging and muttering that Arcade looked well. The answer he received was short, sharp and unprintable. He just sighed and spread his hands, slowly turning on the spot. 

"Unarmed. Check if you want."

Arcade remained resolutely mute.

"You left quickly," Boone said, and Arcade didn't know whether he meant the bar or Nevada. The laughter bubbling up from deep in his chest was faintly hysterical and he tamped it down hard, schooling his face into something almost passing for neutrality.  
  
"What do you want from me?" It was a blunt question and it deserved a blunt answer, but Boone just cracked his knuckles and avoided his eyes.  
  
“You look good,” he said again. “I'm not... I'm not here for you. Didn't know you were here. Here in New Canaan or...” There was a long pause. “Y'know. Here. Thought you were dead.”  
  
“As much as it ruins your day, no. Still very much alive.” The unspoken  _no thanks to your help_  was telegraphed across Arcade's face. He discreetly tested his weight on his ankle, holding back a grimace as a warning spike of pain speared his Achilles tendon.  
  
“Listen, I'm...” Boone pressed his fingers to his temple, and something in Arcade flared up hot and irritable that he still recognised that as a sign that he was trying to form his thoughts into an orderly progression. The fact that he remembered anything about Boone at all was a ready source of personal annoyance. “I'm not here for you or anything to do with, you know. Fugitives.” Boone looked at Arcade sideways and waved his hand in a  _you know_  gesture.  
  
_Liar_ , thought Arcade, fighting the urge to punch him. Instead he forced on a friendly expression and stuck out his hand in a show of friendship.  
  
“To chance meetings,” he said with a smile on his face and flint in his eyes.

He almost crowed when Boone, startled at the sudden change of mood, reached automatically to shake his hand. After all, ignoring learned physical responses never had been Boone's strong point.  
  
It was almost too easy. A sharp yank at his arm to pull him off balance –  _almost a dislocation, if only I'd had the leverage_  – and a hand slammed into his shoulder to spin him around. _Too easy, too easy_. Boone was slow to react, too slow to stop Arcade from clamping a forearm across his neck, crushing his Adam's apple and cutting his breathing until he gasped and wheezed. An unshakeable grip caught his flailing arm, wrenching it high between Boone's shoulder blades with an audible crunch of tendons slipping against bone.  
  
Ten years of looking over your shoulder hardens a man up, and four footsore years slogging through the plains and trading medical services for protection from slavers and raiders makes a man even harder. He learned things, watched things, and after a while Arcade ceased to think of of it as fighting dirty and just fighting to win. He tightened his grip and jerked his head to the side, a vicious headbutt missing its target and instead only issuing a glancing blow to Arcade's jaw. Boone's free hand scrabbled ineffectually at Arcade's arm, blunt nails scratching and slipping against sweating skin, and through a compressed throat he called Arcade every name under the sun.  
  
“Will you--,” he started, arching his back enough that Boone was dragged off the ground and effectively hung by the throat, his efforts to squirm and kick out at Arcade serving only to strangle himself further, “--will you calm down?” He paused for a moment and smiled a bared-teeth grin, his deliberate steady breathing overlaid by the wet rasp of Boone rapidly choking to the point of blackout. “That, by the way, is called  _situational irony_. Just thought you should know.”  
  
A well-aimed kick to the knee was the only response he got.

Only after Arcade felt Boone weaken and go limp did he drop him, shoving him away with enough force to send him stumbling into a wall. Boone rolled onto his hands and knees, the sudden dizzying intake of air leaving him noisily vomiting up a night of beer. It splashed on his fingers and pooled on the ground, thin and stinking.  
  
Arcade crouched at his shoulder, thinking of the knife left on his bedside table, the steel worn down to a razor sharp sliver after years of careful maintenance. Two weeks in the safety of a well guarded, relatively quiet town had made him sloppy and careless, and he only relaxed when his fingers chanced across a fist-sized piece of broken masonry.   
  
“So,” he said, carefully tucking the stone into his palm, sharpest side out, “Last time. Why are you here?”  
  
“Nothing to do with you,” choked out Boone, gulping back great mouthfuls of air in between retching heaves. “I told you. Everyone thinks you're dead.”  
  
“And...?” prompted Arcade.  
  
“And nothing.” He sat up on his haunches, wiping his mouth with the back of his forearm and shaking vomit from his fingers. “I'm a glorified bodyguard. I stand around in uniform and listen to some NCR econ egghead talk trade with the Mormons. Gannon. I'm not lying to you.” His eyes flicked to the stone in Arcade's hand and, for probably the first time that Arcade could recall, Boone looked genuinely nervous.   
  
_Good_ , Arcade thought with more venom than he liked to think himself capable of. He got to his feet, the deep red-hot thrum of pain from his ankle being ignored as best he could. Boone watched the stone like a hawk and for a dark moment Arcade seriously considered striking him hard enough to knock him out.  
  
Years ago he might've made a disarming comment or six, tying Boone into conversational knots before slipping into the darkness and fleeing. Time on the move had made him mean though, killed his idealism and ground off any soft edges. Now all Arcade could think of was protection first and foremost, his mind filled with the all-encompassing desire to not let any intrusions of his past wrecking the comfortable niche he'd made for himself. For himself, for John Hansen, either and or. If it took Boone spilling blood into a slick of his own vomit to buy some time, then so be it.

His grip tightened on the stone and Boone jerked backwards, backing himself square against the wall.   
  
“Fuck, Gannon, I'm being serious.” His hand strayed to his hip, the instinctive move of someone reaching for a weapon that wasn't there. “There's me and one other soldier, we're behind the sherrif's office. He's too green to know about the bounty lists. Wouldn't know you from a hole in the ground. No Rangers in town either, not for another few weeks. I keep telling you,  _everyone thinks you're dead_.”


	3. Chapter 3

There hadn't been much more to it than that. A boot pressed hard on Boone's fingers had been an effective, albeit blunt, instrument of truth. When he'd clutched his hand to his chest and sworn up a blue streak, any attention snatched away by the real possibility of broken bones, Arcade had simply turned on his heel and left. He'd walked as steadily as he could in the wrong direction, doubling back along the train tracks before presenting himself at the southernmost gate to New Canaan itself, obediently letting the guards search him for drugs and weapons and smiling with an easy charm that gave away nothing of the panic singing in his head.  
  
When he'd finally reached his apartment he'd locked and relocked the door behind him, jamming a desk chair under the handle for good measure. It was an unpleasant night for Arcade, his nerves racing and the tinny taste of adrenaline hot under his tongue every time a floorboard creaked or a pipe settled. Eventually he gave up any pretence of sleep at all, kicking the sheets to his feet and reading the same chapter of a cheap cowboy novel over and over, reassured only by the cool press of his knife nestled close and safe by his hip.

* * *

 

Leaving the apartment the next morning had been difficult to the point of farce. He'd laced and unlaced his boots half a dozen times before his growling stomach forced his hand, and even then he'd hesitated at the door for a good long time. It'd taken a neighbour asking what the sam hill he was doing lurking in the hallway to finally convince himself to step out into the thin morning sun.  
  
Now, safely holed up in the back of a dim café and morosely picking at a rapidly cooling plate of eggs, Arcade took stock of the unexpected - and unpleasant - direction his life had suddenly taken.  
  
Absolutely every shred of self-preservation instinct was telling him to run, run, run; haul out of New Canaan and speed towards the next watering stop north, then join a caravan or a merc troop and trade off medical services for escort high into Wyoming. Once he saw the signs of Great Khan settlements off to the east he'd be right to press on alone, hiking rough until he reached the rolling plains surrounding his adopted home town, and then... and then. He didn't know what he'd do after 'and then'. Spend another ten years scanning the road into town, getting twitchy every time a trade caravan rolled into town. Pack up and make his excuses and move on, maybe. Let everyone think he was dead, be a ghost.

Turning back north and west and joining the rapidly expanding lands of the Great Khans was one possibility, although the chances of running into someone he knew – or someone who knows someone who knew someone – from the Followers was a more than distinct possibility. If he went east, well, there was a sizeable Enclave base outside Chicago...  
  
He cut off that line of thought before it really started, feeling disgusted for even contemplating the idea.  _Truly a sign of how far I've sunk_ , he thought dourly, drawing patterns in the silky slip of egg yolk with the edge of his fork.  _Hello gents, I'm back to join the fold. I hear your outfits are really something special. Where have I been for the past forty-six years? Best you don't ask._  
  
Boone might've sworn on his mother's grave that he wasn't after Arcade, but it wasn't too much of a wild assumption to guess that the dollar value of a live Enclave bounty was only ratcheting higher and higher with every passing year. After all, rarity breeds value. He'd been worth two thousand clean NCR dollars when he'd first turned tail and ran and now, the paper dollar being worth something again, he guessed the dollar figure over his head would be double that. Triple even.  
  
He swallowed and stared at the wall, turning his fork over and over between long fingers. People had gone back on their word before for much smaller amounts of money. 

He'd always suspected Boone had something to do with Julie Farkas knowing about his dirty revelation of Enclave stock, even though she'd been tight lipped about exactly how she'd known he was, as she so succinctly put it, suddenly 100% incompatible with the goals, ambitions and general everything-ness of the Followers.

If he'd been so ready to cut Arcade away based just on whose daddy belonged on which side of which war, well, maybe it wasn't also beyond Boone to merrily turn Arcade in for a little spare cash.  
  
His head hurt just thinking about it.

Arcade knew couldn't leave New Canaan, not realistically. Not yet. He'd been sent down with a stunning amount of caps packed into his duffel bag and a shopping list of the stocks needed to keep a rapidly growing family community fit and healthy, and it'd been mostly spent already. No one in New Canaan did anything without half paid up front, particularly when you were buying the services of experienced metalworkers and glass blowers. A thousand needle tips held in cork. A thousand glass syringe bodies, some recycled and some custom made. Petri dishes. Surgical spirit. A working autoclave. Linen and gauze from the fabric manufacturers outside Shady Sands, raw cotton traded from deep down south. Ready made Stimpacks and Med-X and the materials needed to make his own stocks, plus a little extra so Arcade could enlist some of the more experienced gardeners in town into attempting cultivation in such a high altitude.

The list was endless and, personal urges to flee aside, he was bound to New Canaan until everything was ready to be loaded onto a truck and driven north.  
  
 _Responsibility_ , he thought with a wan half-smile.  _The crushing burden of responsibility. And to think half the town winked and told me not to enjoy myself too much in the big city._  
  
He pushed back his chair with a loud scrape across the tiled floor and paid for his meal, adding a slab of chewy flat bread and a pat of butter to his order as an afterthought. In a fit of largesse he treated himself to a jar of gooseberry jam from California, figuring that if he was going to spend the next week or two being completely paranoid and hiding in a small cramped apartment, he might as well fatten himself up a little.

* * *

 

His plans of returning to his apartment and taking the noble option of hiding for as long as possible only lasted until that afternoon; disturbed when a runner from one of the goods manufacturers hammered at his door and presented him with a stack of invoices and an instruction to be at the offices at 10AM sharp, ready to inspect and sign off on the last of his orders.   
  
 _“You know where the workshop is, right?”  
“End of 24th?”  
“You got it, mister. Not as far as the train gates. Head past the meeting hall, ignore those army ring-ins, knock on the workshop doors and we'll come getcha.”_  
  
He'd ushered the teenager out with a promise to be there on time tomorrow and locked the door with slightly more force than he needed. Pressing his shoulder-blades hard into the flat wood of the door, Arcade had stared blankly at the opposite wall and let out a ragged breath he hadn't realised he was even holding.   
  
If Arcade didn't actively try to persuade himself constantly that he was a better person than he actually thought himself to be, that would've been the point where he dragged the bulging dufflebag of caps out from under his bed, laced up his boots and hitched a ride with the first caravan pushing east without even a token glance backwards.   
But, as he reminded himself over and over again, that's not what good people do. Not when they're trusted by a town of good people, a town of good people who didn't pry too hard and warmly accepted him when he'd fallen madly in love with one of their own, who trusted him with what was easily their profits for a year.  
  
 _John Hansen is a good person even if I'm not_. Arcade thumbed off his glasses, dangling the cheap wire frames from an already bent arm as he pinched the bridge of his nose, already painfully aware of a stress headache gathering behind his temples.  _I should write that on the mirror. Remind myself every time I'm brushing my teeth not to leave another trail of wrecked hearts and angry people behind me. To do today: don't be terrible._  
  
For the want of anything better to do he ran a bath and sat in lukewarm water until his fingers pruned, chewing a strip of white willow into pulpy nothingness and half-heartedly reading another chapter in his dog-eared paperback. It maybe wasn't the most exciting potential last night of freedom anyone has ever experienced, but it kept him from guiltily glancing at the heavy canvas bag under the bed and wondering how it'd take to cross the unforgiving dustbowl of the Midwest.


	4. Chapter 4

Arcade would've stalled on the far side of the intersection for the entire morning if he could have, shifting his weight from foot to foot, as if hesitation itself was a force strong enough to ease his acute discomfort with the unfortunate turn his life had taken. Time and commerce waits for no man though, however worried he might be, and the relentless shove of people at his back pushed him forward along the New Canaan main street, his reluctance be damned.   
  
He imagined that he could feel the weight of Boone's stare tracking him all the way down the already sun-baked street and, foolish as it was, he kept his head ducked and his shoulders slumped in some tiny, pathetic effort to render himself invisible.  
  
As a teenager he'd never fully understood why Orion Moreno had been so insistent of telling him that distinctiveness was a curse but now, thirty years later, he was starting to understand what he'd meant in all too familiar detail. Distinctiveness was a curse indeed, and no matter how much he'd clipped his greying hair back to his scalp or let his beard go untrimmed or shrugged as the Wyoming sun gradually weathered his skin, Arcade was forever bound to stand out in some capacity or another. Too tall, too broad, forever towering head and shoulders above a world of weedy Wastelanders. 

Arcade made it as far as the workshop doors before morbid curiosity made him look back, stepping out of the steady flow of shoppers and traders to stand in the lee of the building. He shaded his eyes and squinted back up the street to where Boone and a thin boy who looked barely old enough to shave stood under the shade of the sagging town hall porch, tugging at the collars of their stiff formal uniforms and passing a bottle of water back and forth between them.   
  
He hadn't expected Boone look up and catch his eye, and Arcade certainly didn't expect him to raise a hand – a hand carefully wrapped in linens and held firm against a splint, but a hand nonetheless – in what was unmistakably a greeting. Or a warning. It was hard to tell when Boone wasn't smiling, but then again, when did he?  
  
He'd expected a snarl or a frown, something to indicate that Boone knew where he was and that his time was rapidly running out. He'd fully expected Boone to nudge the soldier next to him and point him out, and then there'd be nothing to do but run or stand his ground. To expect the worst and receive nothing wasn't a comfort at all.  
  
After a long moment Arcade lifted a hand, palm out and fingers tense. He didn't know if it was a wave or a sign of surrender.

* * *

 

“So.” A peaked cap hit the café table with a solid thump, the sudden sound enough to make Arcade spill his coffee over his month-old Shady Sands Gazette. Boone dragged out the chair opposite and took a seat, already loosening the tight collar on his uniform and looking around for a waitress. “Been a week. You haven't been arrested, shot or dumped in the stockade.”  
  
Arcade stared blankly at him, temporarily lost for words.  
  
Boone shrugged and crossed his legs at the ankles, the stiff leather of his boots creaking as he rolled first one ankle then the other, easing off the pressure of a morning spent on his feet. “Reckon you'd start trusting me by now.”  
  
Neatly folding the wet newspaper, Arcade cleared his throat and tried to keep the tremulous angry waver out of his voice. “I don't trust you as far as I could throw you.”  
  
Boone spread his hands wide in a placating gesture before flagging down a passing waitress. “Sunset Sarsaparilla. Coldest you've got.” He looked at the soggy newspaper and now-empty mug in front of Arcade. “And...?”  
  
“Coffee,” supplied Arcade. “Black, no agave.”  
  
The waitress frowned and looked like she was about to object, Arcade hastily waving her into silence. “I know about the levy. It's fine.”  
  
“Levy?”  
  
Arcade bit back a smirk. “Don't worry about it.”  
  
They sat in silence – Arcade tense, Boone relaxed – before the arrival of their drinks acted as a buffer against the dead air hanging over the table.  
  
“So,” said Boone again, twisting open his drink and dropping the bottlecap in his pocket. “Plans?”  
  
Arcade ignored the attempt at small talk in favour of sipping his coffee. It was as awful as the previous cups had been but there was comfort in its bitter and grainy mediocrity, and it gave him something to do other than talk. Eventually he put the mug down and, for the sake of anything else to talk about, asked how Boone's hand was.  
  
“Better now,” Boone allowed, holding it up as if Arcade needed proof that it still existed. “Told the sheriff's wife that I'd dropped a dumpster lid on it. Nothing broken.”  
  
Arcade allowed himself a small smile. “If I'd wanted to break your hand, I would've.” He let Boone make a _yeah right_ noise before continuing. “Besides, I owed you one for ruining my tooth.”  
  
“Did I?” Boone ran his finger through the rings of condensation gathering on the tabletop, smearing it out into a lopsided star pattern. “Don't remember that.”  
  
“One good punch hard enough to give me a fat lip for a fortnight, then it turns out you also gave me the parting gift of a dead premolar.” Arcade took another sip of his coffee. At Boone's questioning look he obligingly hooked a finger to his lip and revealed a tooth-sized gap back on his lower jaw, the space stark against the even set of his teeth. “Two years before I had enough caps to get it yanked out by someone who wasn't a vet, a drunk or both. So... thank you. I can't wait to see what bit of irreparable damage you do when I attempt to leave this time.”  
  
“Sarcasm,” said Boone with a knowing look. “That hasn't changed.”  
  
Arcade glowered behind the protective shield of his coffee mug. “I honestly preferred it when you didn't talk quite this much.”  
  
Awkward silence drifted back over the table, a pool of quiet against the backdrop of café noise. The crowd continued to eat and laugh and joke around them, a wall of noise created by people oblivious to the run-ragged riot of thought careening inside Arcade's head.

As much as Arcade loathed even the concept of Boone being right about anything, he had a point. New Canaan wasn't exactly two streets and a flea-bitten saloon but it certainly wasn't large enough to swallow a fugitive whole. If Boone had wanted to cash him in, really taken him to the cleaners, it would've taken him a day or two at the most to have him cooling his heels in a damp cell with nothing to do 'cept stare at solid brick and stew in his own juices. A few caps bought a lot of dedication from the right sort of men.   
  
He briefly considered that Boone might be putting on a front to distract him and lull him into complacency, then discarded it just as quickly. Unless Boone had lucked into enough money to leave himself positively bristling with intelligence implants, Arcade felt it safe to assume that he didn't have the cunning or smarts to lure him into a sense of false safety. Normally an assumption was a shortcut to an unpleasant surprise later, but for once Arcade felt confident enough to risk playing a potentially stacked deck.  
  
John Hansen, he thought wryly, prepare to prove yourself wrong once more.  
  
He drained his coffee in one long swallow, ignoring the stray grounds that caught between his teeth, sharp and gritty and bitter. Boone glanced over from his none-too-subtle examination of a young couple cooing and sharing their over-buttered sweet cinnamon bread, the ceramic click of Arcade's mug carefully being set on the table enough to recapture his attention.  
  
"Tell me," started Arcade, "If I walk out of that door right now, what are you going to do?"  
  
"Gonna to finish my drink," said Boone, his tone making it clear that he thought Arcade was a little slow in the head. "Then I'm going to get some cold water, then I'm going back on duty until dusk."  
  
Arcade looked over the thin wires of his glasses. "No shouting? No crash tackling me from behind?"  
  
"Hmm. I'd prefer to just finish my drink." To punctuate his point Boone took a long swig of his sarsaparilla and set it down on the table with a solid thump, his expression bordering on outright challenging.  
  
Arcade stood up with as much dignity as he could muster, smoothing his shirtfront flat and gathering his wallet and keys. If anyone had cared enough to watch them interact, they'd assume that Arcade and Boone were something like business partners. Disinterested brothers-in-law, maybe. They certainly wouldn't have predicted that it was taking all of Arcade's willpower to make a graceful exit instead of sidling around the table and backhanding Boone hard enough to send his head spinning.

"Leaving?"  
  
"Yes, I'm leaving. Looking at you is making my blood pressure spike."  
  
Boone lazily waved at the nearest exit as if magnanimously granting Arcade his freedom. “Arcade?”  
  
He flinched. “Don't call me that.”  
  
There was a scrape of wood against wood as Boone rocked his chair back onto two legs, a picture of both insolence and naked curiosity. “What do you want me to call you?”  
  
 _Nothing_.  
  
“John. You can call me John and leave it at that.”  
  
“You don't look like a John.”  
  
“I was going to call myself Craig,” Arcade said tartly, “but I wasn't balding enough to carry it off with aplomb.”  
  
Much to his annoyance, Boone just laughed. “I'll get your coffee. My shout.” The wooden pegs in his chair squeaked ominously as he rocked back a little further. “I eat most nights at the Junction café, just out of the western gate. You should show your face one night. I'll buy you a steak dinner. Catch up.”  
  
Arcade took a deep breath, internally reminding himself not to rise to the bait. “I'll be sure to consider it if a space should open up in my social calender. I'm a busy man. Don't hold your breath.”  
  
A flurry of noise from the kitchen - a rapidfire volley of yelps about hotplates and burn salve and carelessness and the steady  _rin-rin-rin_  of plates rolling across hard floorboards - served as both the perfect distraction and an salve against further conversation. Arcade tugged at his forelock in some kind of half-hearted ingrained gesture of politeness and made his exit, grateful to be bathed in the still heat of a midday sun without shackles on his wrists.  
  
He figured that if he kept a good pace and cut through a culvert or two, he'd be six blocks into suburbia before Boone made the twin discoveries that in New Canaan proper there was a forty cap tax on caffeinated beverages and Arcade had three coffees on his tab already.

_Worth it._


	5. Chapter 5

It was several days before Arcade felt inclined to take Boone up on his invitation for a meal. When he'd caught himself wondering if he could possibly use the wild chokecherries that grew unchecked outside the town walls to brew up some bathtub gin and improve his evening, he'd taken it as proof that he was struck with cabin fever and needed human contact.

The fact that his only dining companion was someone he wouldn't piss on if they were on fire was discarded as a minor detail. He could angst over the moral implications of willingly choosing to spend time with Boone later, after he'd filled his belly and skipped on the bill.  
  
A romantic at heart might have detailed it as a reunion: two old adversaries setting aside their pasts to break bread, soft hearts and misty eyes proclaiming the act of him pushing open the rusted café door as a grand homecoming of sorts. Arcade, the romance scrubbed out of him long ago, just thought it would be an improvement over another evening of reading in the bathtub.  
  
Any plans for a subtle, low key entrance to the diner were pipped by the screech of un-oiled springs and the increasingly spirited debate of two Brahmin traders out on the front porch, punctuating their sentences with great gusts of exhaled cigarette smoke like a pair of ornery bulls. Prices per side of beef were serious business out here, with profit margins razor thin at the best of times. Arcade was half tempted to tell them that a rancher low in Montana was breeding a new strain of Brahmin, an exotic with a single head. The meat was fatty and delicious, suitable for drying and preserving, and more importantly worth a third again per carcass. It'd ruin the Brahmin barons eventually. A part of him hoped he'd still be alive to see it happen.  
  
He shook his head and wiped his boots clean on the straw mat, wondering exactly when he'd become such a country squire.  _Or_ , he thought, weaving his way to the corner table where Boone already sat, a seat no doubt chosen to give him the best view of anyone entering the diner,  _a more apt question would be when did I change from pretend-boring to legitimately boring? I care about cattle prices. I spent my afternoon haggling for a better price on raw cotton and enjoyed myself. This is a cry for help._  
  
Boone didn't offer him a greeting, just pushed out the chair opposite him with the toe of his boot and forked up another mouthful of apple bake.  
  
Arcade sat down heavily and stared back, as expressionless as he could muster. Boone broke the silence first, mumbling  _hello_  through a mouthful of butter pastry that flaked down his front.  
  
“This isn't a peace meeting. Just so we're clear.”  
  
Boone coughed a little on his dessert, a big hand pressed to his chest as he swallowed a big gulp of water. “Right," he said, and coughed again. "No suing for peace."  
  
“I'm only here so I don't go stir crazy. This is strictly a mental health exercise.” Arcade pushed his glasses up his nose. The wire arms bent out of shape from where he'd fallen asleep wearing them last night, and no amount of straightening them seemed to keep from from sliding.  
  
A cheerful waiter in a dirty apron bustled up to his elbow and licked the stub of a pencil, ready to take his order. His order was simple, steak and greens and as much blackened corn as the cook was prepared to pile on his plate. Simple fuel to be eaten simply. At the waiter's suggestion he ordered a bottle of wheat beer as well, and at Boone's arched eyebrow he begrudgingly said to make it two.

Boone scraped his own plate clean, the tines of his fork scraping against enamel as he chased every last skerrick of apple and pastry crumbs. Satisfied that there wasn't anything left to eat but the plate, he pushed it away and slouched back in his chair, hands folded across his stomach. "Never pictured you with a shaved head before."  
  
"I wasn't aware I was going to be critiqued this evening." Arcade self-consciously scrubbed his hand across his scalp, his nervousness forcing an automatic refuge in the comfort of sarcasm. "It was that or put on a clean shirt. I didn't want you to tell everyone I've let myself go completely."  
  
"Look like a wandering Dharmarist with that beard." He emptied the last of his beer with a deep swallow, rise and fall of his throat catching the light for a moment. "Not that I'd tell anyone anything anyway. You being dead and all." There was another pause. "Beard looks like shit though."  
  
"Thank you." Arcade carded his fingers through the increasingly wild undergrowth along his jaw. "I keep meaning to tidy myself up but then I think, who am I trying to impress?"  
  
"Suits you. Think I said this before you tried to, huh, choke me to death 'n brain me with a rock, but you look good."  
  
Arcade scoffed. "I don't look dead, you mean."  
  
"Yeah. That too." Boone sat silent as Arcade's food was delivered with a hearty invitation to good health, then prompted the arrival of their beers with a pointed look and a shake of an empty bottle. "Don't know what you've been doing with yourself. It agrees with you though."  
  
"Now you're just trying to make me uncomfortable." He tore off a chunk of soda bread, settling it into the butter seeping out from a mountain of ayocote beans, fat and green and the size of a grown man's finger. Arcade made a noise of approval and tucked in, happily ignoring his table companion in favour of inhaling dripping rare meat that was barely six hours past its final breath. Not for the first time he wondered how he'd eaten the lean, stringy meat of the Mojave and found it in any way pleasurable.

There was probably a weak analogy to be made about a great deal of his Mojave life there, love life included, but he didn't care enough to explore it further.   
  
If Arcade was expecting uneasy silence or awkward conversation, he got neither of these. The silence was surprisingly comfortable, enough to trigger a vague memory of sitting at a long dining table under dim lights, eating in mutual silence with no pressure to be witty or charming or erudite. Boone made little conversation, content to cross his legs at the ankles and tap the toes of his desert boots in time with the jukebox. Whenever Arcade trimmed off a scrap of excess fat and pushed it to the edge of his plate, it was quickly liberated and eaten with nothing less than enjoyment.  
  
"That's practically raw, you know."  
  
"Good enough for you, good enough for me."   
  
Arcade swallowed a mouthful of corn, reaching for his handkerchief and blotting away butter where it caught at the edge of his moustache. “Not good for your heart though,” he said, voice muffled by folded cotton.  
  
“Huh,” said Boone. “Nothing's good for you. Butter. Fat. Cigars. Medics made me stop eating potatoes and now I don't know if life is worth living.”  
  
“Tell them you got a second opinion. Your private doctor is allowing potatoes three times a week.”  
  
Boone grinned and drained his beer in three loud gulps. “Private doctor, huh? Good to know I'm going up in the world.” His chair scraped as he pushed it back and got to his feet, rolling his shoulders in an effort to loosen up after being seated for so long. “Listen doc, I've got a card game on tonight. If you want...”

An emphatic shake of his head broadcast Arcade's opinion of that offer loud and clear. He swallowed and frowned, working free a stray fibrous vein from a bean that got caught on a tooth. “Don't make this into anything more than it is. I said this wasn't a peace meeting.”  
  
“Ah,” Boone said, completely unfazed. “A grudge. Lunch tomorrow then?”

He clapped Arcade on the shoulder before a suitably acidic reply could spring forth, a goodnight casually tossed over his shoulder as he was swallowed by the thrum and noise of a busy diner.   
  
It was only much later, lulled into complacency by steak and tart lemon bread, that Arcade realised that Boone had exacted his own petty vengeance on him in turn. He might not have skipped out on a particularly staggering bill but, as Arcade gritted his teeth and unhappily paid for a tab that included Boone's double serve of apple bake, it was the  _principle_  of the thing that mattered.

* * *

 

Despite the fact that they were none too fond of each other they formed what loosely passed as a friendship of convenience. Company, at least of the type not conducted horizontally, could be hard to find in a remote town away from family and friends, and neither Arcade nor Boone were in a position to be picky about where they found conversation.  
  
Sometimes Boone would take a break and join Arcade at his lunch bolthole of choice, the waitresses quickly elevating them to the exalted status of regulars. Arcade eventually told one of them that the man in the fancy uniform was his brother-in-law, and that killed off most of their polite questions about their day and their health.

 _No reasonable man enjoys spending time with his in-laws_ decreed the fry cook, from then on slipping Arcade real coffee without charging him the caffeine tax. Sympathy in the form of reasonably good beans traded all the way from deepest Mexico did a lot to sooth any irritation he felt at himself for occasionally enjoying Boone's company, particularly when a mug arrived midnight black and swampy after brewing for hours on the back of a greasy stove.  
  
The questions died off completely when Arcade finally told Beatrice, she of the thick plaits and thicker waist, that the bank of ribbons on Boone's breast each represented fifty men he'd personally killed with his bare hands and a leather belt. Cruel, yes. Effective, definitely.  
  
In the evenings Arcade gave himself a desert bath - a damp cloth passed over his face and neck, scrubbed under his armpits and wrung out clean before the last dregs of his good all-American upbringing kicked in and demanded that testicles and toes be scrubbed to pink-skinned levels of hygiene. A clean shirt and the worst of the city bulldust shaken from his trousers: as far as Arcade was concerned that made him fit to dine with Kimball himself.  
Boone was far more mercenary about his appearance. A judicious application of miss and ma'am where it counted in combination with a smart uniform, brass buttons twinkling in the lamplight and boots occasionally shiny enough to shave by, meant that Boone seemed to live on an endless supply of cool water, extra portions and as much matronly affection as the older waitresses cared to lavish. As fiercely independent as New Canaan was, there were more than a few people around who fled east after the Brotherhood war with heads full of memories of brutal deaths, the ozone tang in the air of plasma firefights, of young men and women fighting and dying under the NCR flag. The brass bear on Boone's hat did more to win hearts than his limited charisma ever could.

They achieved a tentative détente over the course of the week, with any easing of tension more fuelled by being strangers in a strange land than a true desire to reconcile. Arcade wanted someone to talk to. Talk _at_. Even Boone would do in a pinch.

It was with this in mind, idly making patterns with strips of cold pickled pumpkin and searching for conversation over dinner, Arcade made mention of something he'd read recently. Warring soldiers declared a truce on an old, pre-war holy day and ventured into hellish land where no man trod to share small gifts and, for a day or two at least, gain a little peace and warmth in their lives.  
  
“Interesting concept, right? Breaking bread with the enemy. I don't know whether it takes a brave man or a stupid man or both to be the one to extend the olive branch.” He looked over his glasses to see if any of this was getting to Boone. “Then again I don't know if I want to extend the olive branch or beat you senseless with it.”  
  
Boone thoughtfully chewed a hard heel of soda bread. “Don't over-think it, Gannon.”  
  
“I... I was going to ask when you suddenly got so wise, but I don't know if I can take you seriously when you're talking with your mouth full. And it's John. I'm John.”  
  
Boone dutifully swallowed before continuing. “Sorry. Too long away from the wife; all civilising coming undone. Just take it for what it is, Ga-- John.” He pointed at Arcade with his knife. “I'm bored shitless. You're going stir crazy. Think you trust me enough now to know that I'm not turning you in. Just take it for what it is. S'what I'm doing.”  
  
“Possibly,” Arcade allowed. “You'll have to forgive me if I'm not exactly keen to sling an arm over your shoulder and pick up where we left off.”

He tactfully ignored the flush of pink that stole over Boone's cheeks. It wasn't exactly what he was implying – the complete opposite, rather – but if he wanted to play the shy maiden with dirty memories, then so be it. Arcade decided to twist the knife a little more.  
  
“You said something about a wife?”  
  
Boone launched himself at the conversational salvo like a drowning man being handed a float. “Yeah. Yes! Charlotte. Met her when I was posted back to Shady Sands. She's a supply clerk in HQ. Went there to get my transfer papers signed, ran into her in the mess and that's it.” He rolled his eyes good-naturedly at himself. “Sorry. Four years 'n I'm still a fool for her.”

He dug through his wallet and produced a tiny, well-thumbed photograph of a pretty woman with a snub nose and a cheeky smile, Boone at her side with a grin wider than Arcade had ever seen him sport in the flesh.  
  
“She's beautiful. Far out of your league.” Arcade cleaned his glasses on his shirt in order to look at the photo properly. “You scrub up ok too, if I'm being complimentary.”  
  
“Heh. She keeps me in line.” He patted at his collar and fished out a thin chain from under the wilting cotton, a solid plain silver band hanging loose in his palm. “Didn't think I'd ever be in the right place to wear one of these again, but... stranger things, I guess.”  
  
Arcade took a sip of his cheap headache-inducing wine. "Children?"  
  
Boone shrugged. “Trying. It'll happen if it happens.” He picked at the paper label on his beer bottle and gave a lopsided grin. “Practice is fun, but a baby would be... shit, the best.” The grin gave way to a fleeting flash of that familiar, aching, indescribable sadness he remembered Boone always carrying on his brow. “Messed up that before. Any second chance is a good chance, right?”  
  
Arcade resisted the urge to offer unsolicited advice and merely let himself be questioned in turn, enjoying the novelty that was a talkative Boone. He wasn't exceptional company but he wasn't intolerable either, and he was unfortunately right about one thing: not overthinking anything seemed to be the best - and only - way to keep his festering resentment of Boone under wraps.

"And you? You're wearing a ring yourself."  
  
He debated whether to smoothly slip into another set of lies, fake names to match the fake places, but decided against it. “Old married. Fell in love, made a house together.” He rubbed the plain gold ring with his thumb, an automatic habit whenever he thought about Wyatt.  
  
Boone lifted an eyebrow and Arcade waved his hand. "Past tense. He passed away last year." He fished a bean out from under a mountainous pile of over-salted mashed potato, rolling it across his plate with the side of his fork. "Don't… just, please don't make sad sounds about it. It wasn't entirely unexpected. He had a rough job."  
  
"Doctor as well?"  
  
Arcade laughed, a bright peal of sound that drew the attention of people around them. He pressed his fingers to his mouth and bought himself under control. "Sorry, I'm sorry. It's just the though of anyone describing Wyatt as a doctor is a little, heh, staggering. He didn't trust books in the way I don't trust… I don't know, his motorcycles. He was a leading hand on one of the Brahmin ranches. Long days, hard work."  
  
He chuckled at Boone's incredulous look. "What, are you really surprised I'd be swept off my feet by anyone but the strong, silent, leather boots and trail dust sort? I think I only impressed him because he dared me to eat a plate of Brahmin fries on our first date. They're actually not too bad if you don't think too hard about it.”  
  
Boone made a disgusted face. “I'll take your word on it.”  
  
“I'll buy you a plate sometime and you can see how manly you really are. Anyway. He passed away after an accident a few days from home; got caught in a snow storm high up one of the peaks. Everyone said it was just bad timing to be up so high right when the first good flurry of the season was a few weeks early." He smiled a little sadly, temporarily lost in warm memories. "He was a good one. You don't get too many good ones."  
  
"Did you tell him?"  
  
"About what?"  
  
Boone fidgeted. "About… that. You."

He didn't make it easy for him. "What about me? That I was gay? I think that was a mutual realisation somewhere around the time he sucked me behind the saloon during Ida's birthday party."  
  
His discomfort at even bringing up Arcade's background was almost a physical presence at the table, and not for the first time Arcade wondered how even after all this time a name could hold such fear over grown men. He wondered what kind of bedtime stories Craig Boone carried around in his head about faceless men behind yellow-eyed helmets. _You'd better behave, young man. If you're bad the President will snatch you away at night._

"You almost completely destroyed my life once over this word, Craig." He put down his fork and stared levelly at him. "At least have the courtesy to be man enough to say it."  
  
"Enclave." His voice was low, barely audible from across the table. Arcade was oddly grateful: loudly dropping the E-word even out here was an invitation for all sorts of uncomfortable attention.  
  
"No, I didn't." He picked up his fork again, idly pushing the potato mash into a neat square. "It doesn't mean anything there. The name, the group. It's nothing to them, not really." He smiled wanly. "At least I got the fresh start I wanted. I just maybe wish I didn't have to spend a few years doing some vile things to stay intact enough to earn it.”  
  
Boone unexpectedly refrained from asking for uncomfortable details. "So you just turned up at some town? Why would they trust you?"  
  
"I'm a sawbones, Boone. Not a very good one, but good enough. Four years of broadening my skill set in order to decrease my chances of being clapped in irons or given a slave necklace proved to be surprisingly useful." That same weak half-smile stayed fixed on his face. "Thanks to you I'm a doctor, an emergency dentist, a halfway adequate vet… if I knew how to give a decent haircut or soothe a crying baby, I'd be indispensable."  
  
As for his more unique skills, learned at the feet of slavers and bandits and people with twisted black knots where their heart should be, they were something he hoped he'd never have to tell anyone about, or use ever again. No amount of physician heal thyself was helpful at erasing the image of a dozen men on their hands and knees, naked and splay-legged and with such beseeching panic in their eyes, and the slaver handing him a knife and telling him to _make 'em docile. Take the fight out of 'em permanent like, doctor doctor._

After that day – and dozens, hundreds of days like it; an unending roster of terrible, soul-destroying things done with a gun at his back or a threat in the air or, when things were at their hardest, when the purse offered was heavy enough - even a black sense of humour couldn't take the sting out of Big Billy Pearl complimenting Arcade on his startling efficiency at castrating bulls.  
  
He blinked hard and pushed away his plate, feeling distinctly ill.  
  
There was a long awkward silence before Boone tentatively offered up his beer bottle and clinked it against Arcade's wine glass. "To the good ones." He paused. "To the good ones and the lost ones."  
  
"To the good ones," Arcade echoed. Sometimes the lost ones were lost for a reason.


	6. Chapter 6

They slipped into silence, the click of Boone's cutlery replacing any attempts at conversation. Arcade's abandoned plate was unceremoniously switched with Boone's empty dish and dispatched with ruthless efficiency, a steady motion of fork-to-mouth that equal parts amusing and disgusting to watch. Eventually he finished, pushing his chair back enough to lace his fingers over his stomach and pin Arcade with an openly curious look.

Arcade resisted the urge to squirm uncomfortably and instead steeled himself to stare impassively back. Boone broke first and looked away, drumming his fingers on the slightly threadbare cotton of his shirt. “So,” he finally said. “What're you doing with yourself these days, exactly?”  
  
"This and that," he replied as po-faced as he could manage.  
  
This only earned him an exasperated sigh. “This and that what?”  
  
“This and, well, that. You know. Things with people in a place far, far away.” He pushed his glasses back up his nose and mimicked Boone's pose, oblivious to the halfway interested looks of the diners surrounding them. “You know me. Out of sight, out of mind.”  
  
He suspected Boone had learned a lot more in the way of patience in the past decade. Long ago – a lifetime ago – he'd practically stalked Arcade down a hallway and threatened to split his face open if he didn't immediately draw a distinction between tossing out a pithy Latin quip and being a dedicated skirt-wearing infiltrator from Arizona. Now he just sat there and drew from an apparently limitless well of patience, like there was no one else in the world and there was nowhere he had to be.

It was _infuriating_.  
  
This time Arcade broke first, if only to settle the uncomfortable feeling that churned somewhere behind his sternum. "Still in medicine. Still wearing a coat in an effort to look mildly important.”  
  
"Researching?"  
  
"Ha! No. Cuts and scrapes and babies, mostly." He picked up his wine glass and drained it, making a face at the rough and raw youthful wine. "It's not quite what I had planned for myself, but it's good enough. Quiet enough. There are three healthy children running around with my name as a thank you, so hey, clearly I must be doing something right."  
  
Boone chuckled. "They're called Arcade? That's a curse."  
  
Arcade licked his fingertip and ran it around the rim of his glass, the ringing sound it produced enough to make Boone wince. "Good thing I discarded that particular curse years back, right." He smiled, a sickly wan twitch of his lip. "You're the first person to call me that in a long, long time."  
  
"And how does it sound?" There was a pause. “...John.”  
  
The question sounded far too knowing and loaded, and the uncomfortable sensation in his chest tightened further. He closed his eyes and willed it to go away, too tired after a hard day and a harder conversation to give in to the urge to get up and run. His stomach hurt, churning at nothing.  
  
“John?”  
  
"Calling me that is like you're talking to someone else." His head spun as he got to his feet, and he hoped to whatever god still cared that he wasn't staggering like a drunk. "I'm... uh, let's go. Let's get out of here." The room was too crowded, too noisy, too much, and he felt like his skin would split if he stayed in there any longer. He threw a handful of caps on the table and split for the door, checking his speed just enough that he couldn't be accused of running.

Boone finally emerged from the diner a few minutes later, folding his wallet back into his pocket with a disgruntled expression that he turned full force on Arcade, lurking under a streetlight with his arms folded tight over his chest. He knew he looked waxy and pale, and Boone told him as such.  
  
"Claustrophobic," he lied. "Spaces like that make my head spin."  
  
Boone just gave him a look. "You've been fine every other night."  
  
"Sudden onset claustrophobia then. Does it matter? I'm outside, I'm fine." He pushed off the lamppost, patting at his pockets and hissing with frustration when he couldn't find whatever it is he was looking for. "Do you smoke?"  
  
"Charlotte'd have my head if I started again. The doctor said it'd be easier to fall pregnant once she quit. Says she can't handle the smell now without making her sick." He rubbed the back of his neck and jerked his thumb towards the city gates, a silent invitation to walk. "You still smoke? Pretty sure you declared it a foul habit."  
  
"I quit a month or two before I got here." Arcade jammed his hands in his pockets and walked along the gutter. Boone stayed on the footpath, the difference in height making them equal for once. "And yes, it's a foul habit. A foul, filthy, wonderful, calming habit." He made a noise that might've been a laugh. "I only quit because my brother-in-law shamed me into it. He achieved in one conversation what five winters of being banished to smoke on the porch during winter couldn't. More power to him, right?"

* * *

Most of the bigger families had a few dairy cows on hand, plump heifers with doe eyes and heavy udders that grazed in the house yards and kept the grass down. The calves had an unerring instinct for finding an unlocked gate or sagging fence, proving that some childish behaviours cross the boundaries of all species. Mid-summer lead to an almost daily discovery of laundry trampled into the mud or flowerbeds grazed back to the dirt, a guilty trail of hoofprints leading straight to the culprits.

Arcade himself had returned home for lunch to discover the Wilson cows had knocked over his cold frame and were happily eating their way through his painstakingly tended broc flowers. He'd howled bloody murder, dropping his bag and waving his arms like a dervish until cows and Arcade both had torn up the garden even further in a mad stampede.

The excitement had been loud enough to draw Billy out of his yard, leaning on the gate and laughing his fool head off at the sight of Arcade doubled over and puffing, his face beet red from exertion and fury.

"Reckon you should ditch the smokes, John. You wheezing like that, no wonder Wyatt was able to catch you."  
  
"You figure," he'd replied, half laughing himself. "Reckon one or two'll taste like heaven with the white veal I plan on eating tonight." A sharp clap at the calf already nosing its way back to his yard sent it careening back to the gap in the fence. "Just got to kill it first. I was going to leave the head on Jesse Wilson's doorstep as a thank you gift."  
  
"Dunno. I think Wyatt would've liked for you to spend a few more years around without coughin' up a raw lung on his Mariposa lilies." He'd given Arcade a small sad smile at that, the sharp pain of loss having mellowed down to a bittersweet ache for the both of them. "Reckon I'd like to see you stick around for a few years more, and your nephew too. Humour me. Think 'bout it."  
  
It was a cheap play on his emotions, but Arcade knew as well as Billy that half the time all it took was the right word in the right place to soften his heart and change his mind. The other half of the time, well... an appeal to obligation and duty and whatever it was that drove John Hansen into being a model citizen worked, and if not, cold hard caps or a blunt measure of guilt usually did the trick. Billy wasn't above deploying all three tactics if needed.  
  
_You owe them. You owe Wyatt. Try to be a better person, won't you?_

The funeral had been brief. The ground was already winter-hard enough to blunt their shovels, and a pair of sturdy ranchers that Wyatt worked for had volunteered to take over digging as Arcade and Billy took it in turns to sit with the still and silent body gaily wrapped in a colourful bedsheet. Billy and Nance said a few words once they put him into the ground, and Arcade had tossed the first handful of dirt onto Wyatt without being able to say much of anything at all.  
  
Both families grieved all through a harder winter than normal, the snow unrelenting and food severely rationed. Billy retreated inwards to seek joy from his heavily pregnant wife, focusing on new life instead of a brother now gone. Arcade mourned until he was grey and faded, still gently chiding his patients to dress warmly and look after themselves as even as he, in small and inconsequential ways, stopped caring. Grief did not treat him well.  
  
The birth of Jack at three in the morning on a brutal midwinter night had probably been what kicked him back into life, or at least spurred him into doing more than eating and sleeping and walking through his days in a kind of robotic trance. Encased in the cocoon of a warm sitting room and breathing in the iron tang of blood and sweet sweat, he'd patiently sat with Nance and held her steady as she hung onto his shoulders and crouched in front of the fireplace, her normally serene demeanour gone as she swore up a blue streak and birthed her first child into his waiting hands.  
  
Billy had wisely hidden himself away in the kitchen, drinking mug after mug of honey and hot water, and his eyebrows had shot to his hairline when Arcade let himself out of the sitting room, wiping his hands clean on a shirt covered in vernix and a smattering of blood.

"Never mind my shirt," he said. "Nance was amazing. I had to do nothing but sit there and graciously take a lot of verbal abuse on your behalf. Ten fingers, ten toes, healthy and noisy. He's a fine baby boy. Don't fuck it up."  
  
Arcade didn't consider himself a particularly good uncle, but he'd mastered the art of mindlessly shifting his weight from foot to foot when Jack was passed up to him, talking brahminshit in an endless waterfall of words that made the baby smile and clutch at his moustache. He remembered something from his rather spartan paediatrics education about babies and bright colours and cognitive development, so he'd paid through the nose for a pre-war mobile and shyly given it at Jack's naming day party. It'd taken him a few weeks to realise that the spinning constellation of rockets and planets was a little too close in appearance to the REPCONN orrery, and it was a constant source of irritation that he hadn't been able to look at it without feeling a bubbling hot fizz of anger ever since.  
  
The afternoon after he'd lost his crop of medicinal flowers, he'd finished repairing the fouled fence and automatically reached for his cigarettes, keen to have a moment of silence as he sat to watch the setting sun paint the hills. Then he'd sighed and shrugged, making a trip back to the house before hopping the gate into to the long paddock that ran down to a lazy, slow moving creek. Then, Billy's words running through his head all the while, he'd thrown his last carton in the water. He muddied it and made sure it was soaked and sodden before walking back up the slope and into the warmth of his kitchen.  
  
He'd ignored the table – still set for two, still stuck in a holding pattern he didn't know how to break – and ate straight from the fridge, trying not to think too hard about anything at all.

* * *

“I've been told repeatedly I was the worst thing to hit town for a week and a half.” He kicked a tin can with unerring accuracy into the black mouth of an open drain, his grin rendering him almost boyish again. “I'm fairly sure I called Katie at the general store a bitch at least twice. Even after being away for nearly half of summer I'm going to have to lay low in case she calls in my tab.”  
  
Boone waved him into silence. “Wait, nephew?”  
  
“Seven months, give or take. I've been assured that he'll be more interesting once he can parse sentences.”  
  
“You lucky bastard,” said Boone, the jealousy in his voice totally unmasked.  
  
Arcade didn't bother offering platitudes or advice. It would happen if it happened, and if the desire to be a father was any indicator of potential success then Craig Boone would be elbow deep in baby shit this time next year. While a large part of him thirsted to see Boone suffer in thousands of unique and interesting ways, he also hoped everything would work out for his family. 

Sometimes redemption was something you had to seek out. Sometimes redemption just happens to those who need it the most.  
  
“Luck is what you make of it,” he said, fairly sure he'd read that on an ancient sugar packet somewhere. “Or something like that. I'd quote something snappy and Latin for old times sake, but I've managed to forget just about everything.”  
  
They took the long way back to the gates, alternating between comfortable silence and stilted small talk. Out here beyond the city gates, away from the strict clean living that dominated the city proper, the nights were louder and full of life. The scent of food drifted in the air and snatches of music could be heard over the background noise of the streets. To Boone it must've felt like a sleepy, back-water burg after living around the hustle of NCR. To Arcade, feeling awfully countrified after years of living as quietly as possible, it felt fantastically active, something still novel even after a month.  
  
The western gates of the city itself emerged from the half darkness, a solid reminder that all evenings need to draw to a close eventually. Boone fell into step beside Arcade, digging in his pockets for the scrap of paper that identified him to the guards as an NCR emissary.

"So, uh. Whereabouts are you staying?"  
  
Arcade didn't bother answering, choosing instead to give Boone the sort of withering look that could shrivel the most self-confident man. Boone caught his arm, his grip firm enough to halt him in his tracks.

“Listen,” said Boone, eyes bright in the dim light, “Will you just relax? Makes me tense just being around you.”  
  
The words _go fuck yourself_ were already forming on Arcade's tongue when Boone dropped his arm like he was made from hot coals, blatantly conscious of being right in his personal space.

“Don't know how often I'm gonna want to keep saying this before I get sick of saying it, Arcade, but I'm not trying to pin you," said Boone softly, keenly aware of the two guards watching them with interest.  
  
The childish instinct to shove him hard in the chest and send him stumbling backwards was hard to repress, and Arcade settled for pushing his hands deep into his pockets and stepping out of his shadow. It was infinitely less satisfying than a hard shove in the sternum, but less likely to earn him another black eye and the unwanted attention of the guards. If it was his last night he'd probably give into the temptation and cause a scene, but not when he was facing another fortnight orbiting around this stuffed-shirt churchy trade town.

It'd been tiring enough avoiding Boone when he thought he was actively trying to collar him, let alone avoiding someone after you just humiliated them by pushing them into a gutter clogged with rotting autumn leaves.  
  
“Limits, Boone.” He shook his head as he started slowly making his way to the gates. “Limits and boundaries. Let's just agree to talk about the weather from now on. It'll be easier on your ego and easier on my sense of wounded pride, and we can all get along without fighting like rats in a sack.”  
  
If Boone took offence at Arcade deliberately hanging back with the guards and refusing their offers of a cigarette with no small amount of weak-willed resistance, he didn't show it. He just whistled tunelessly through his teeth and folded his NCR-stamped form back into his pocket, and faded into the grey light of the side streets without so much as a glance back in Arcade's direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Repconn Orrery is from [The End](http://archiveofourown.org/works/398067), the previous story in this series.
> 
> I'm extremely grateful to everyone who has kindly left a bookmark/subscription/kudos/comment/etc on this relic, especially those who read it many years ago and are taking it for a second spin. Thank you!


	7. Chapter 7

The best way to deal with the unsettling feeling of Boone constantly leaving Arcade on his back foot was simply to pretend it wasn't happening. His nervous snap out the western gates was mentally filed under 'too taxing to think about' and ignored in favour of burying himself in mindless busywork.

A trader had informed him weeks ago that the local doctor was a ready source of manufactured medicine with a fast turnover and reliable stock. Doc Angela suffered no fools and, after Arcade had peevishly asked if his daily orders were finished just once more than was strictly necessary, tartly announced that if he was so desperate to make a stockpile, he could just damn well do it himself. They arranged a 70/30 split on raw material and finished goods, and she provided a clean and sanitary workspace that was itself a welcome antidote to the last of the late summer heat.  
  
It helped that Angela was a woman after his own heart, nearly 70 years old and as tough as teak, long on patience and short on temper. She and her husband Ty left the NCR back when Arcade was still in short pants, pushing out beyond the nebulous eastern boundaries until they settled in New Canaan to start anew. Their arrival hadn’t been well-timed, not after NCR refugees from the Brotherhood war already well encamped outside the city walls. They’d paid their dues and been accepted into the town properly, no thanks to Ty reluctantly admitting that he’d been a former NCR Ranger, handy with a gun despite a head full of bad memories. His almost fanatical devotion to avoiding serving under the sheriff in favour of tending the vast crops of salicorn out by the great lake had raised a few eyebrows, almost as much as the fact that he and Angela still refused to convert.

Arcade liked them despite their NCR background. He liked them _because_ of their background. Them and all the rest of 'em, all drummed out of the west for one thing or another, with some reasons kept more secret than others.  
  
Spending hours mindlessly slicing and dicing in order to create the base materials for stimpaks maybe wasn't the most exciting way to pass a long afternoon, but for someone who wanted little more than to ignore the outside world it was perfect. The art of prepping raw ingredients and sterilising vast racks of syringes was a ritual in itself, the dance of his knife repeated time after time until muscle memory took over and he drifted away into his own head, safely ensconced in the strange comfort of a bright antiseptic room.  
  
He sat there now, ignoring the long slant of sunlight creeping up his legs as he propped his chin on his hand and idly combed his fingers through his beard, watching a beaker of minced flower stamens gently poach over a low flame. The scent was sweet and familiar, and he wondered how his gardens at home were faring through a dry summer.  
  
A computer sat in the corner of the room by a towering pile of holotapes that Doc Angela had painstakingly collected over the years, some traded hand to hand from as far away as the east coast. The novelty of new music was impossible to resist, certainly not after listening for years upon years to the keening melancholy music that the lone radio station high on the Montana border favoured so heavily. He tapped the toe of his boot against the rung of his chair as he leaned forward to gently stir the barely bubbling beaker, marking the beat out in the solid knock of leather against wood.  
  
He barely glanced up as Angela slid open the heavy glass door, scraping her boots clean on the porch mat as she juggled the weight of a heavy crate against her hip. The last time he offered to help carry something in she'd given him hell for treating her weak and since then he hadn't budged. Ditching his social graces suited him just fine - the less he had to stand up, the more he could enjoy sitting down.

"I thought I made a rule about you singing," she said over her shoulder as she slid the door closed.  
  
Arcade scoffed dismissively. "You need to get your hearing checked."  
  
"Toe-tapping leads to nodding leads to humming leads to you making a godawful atonal honking noise. I'm just stopping you before you start." She grinned at him over the crate, carefully lifting out rack after rack of delicate glass syringes.  
  
"You know it's not fair when you go around making valid points." He set down the glass stirring rod and spun around on the stool, fingers laced across his belly. "It takes all the fun out of picking a fight with you."  
  
"I'd rather be unfun than have you melt out my ears with your attempts at singing, young man. Is the autoclave sterile?"  
  
"Mhmm. Ran a cleaning cycle before; it should still be hot."   
  
He turned back to the bench, looking at the flower broth with a well-practiced eye. Too pale and undercooked meant that the efficacy of the final raw powder was reduced, leading to the real possibility of inadvertent overdoses as people panicked and stacked injection upon injection. Too overcooked and the chemical structure of the product itself changed, making a once-useful life-saving medicine into a poison that corrupted the body.

When he was trialling his research years ago with the Followers, Arcade rapidly discovered that overcooked florals mean festering wounds, cancerous growths, or for one series of dogs, catastrophic cardiac arrest within seconds of injection. Since then his knowledge of the growing seasons had improved and he could tell with a pinch and a sniff when the flowers were at their fullest and needed little cooking, or when they were winter-weak and needed the most attention.

He'd kept the heart-stopping recipe for safely at the back of his mind though, tinkered with it a little here and there, improvised on the fly. More than one bounty hunter had met a sudden end with a searing pain deep in their chest and the cool pinch of a needle against their neck, Arcade's panicked breathing the last thing to grace their ears. One Ranger had clutched at his sleeve and thanked him for his unexpected mercy, and that was the only death that gnawed at his conscience for longer than a week.  
  
There was a sharp rap of knuckles against glass. Ty stood outside the door with a runty young man at his heels, the sunlight at their backs masking their faces. Angela waved for them to come in, Ty good-naturedly clucking his tongue as he endured yet another a sharp reminder to wipe his boots clean. The young man followed, tucking a dull olive cap under his arm as he stepped over the threshold. Cap. A uniform. A soldier.  
  
The brass wink of the roaring bear caught his eye as every muscle in his body tensed and the hot tin tang of adrenaline flooded his mouth. The soldier had given him a long look, sizing him up as if trying to place his face.  
  
His mind spun out faster than he could follow, a confusing jumble of plans of how to get past a soldier and a solid slab of aged yet iron-hard Ranger - _the cutting knife, ran it over a whetstone only this morning, jab and twist with the tip to punch through leather, grab with your left hand and shove with your right, send the boy through the glass if I have to, Angela is unarmed and behind the bench, no consequence, forget the bag, just move just move just move_ – thrumming through his head as he arrived at the realisation that he'd been lazy and complacent this week, hadn't checked the trading caravan schedule, didn't know if he could risk taking the eastern gate from town and pushing on through the night in the hope of running into a trade caravan already a full day ahead on the road.  
  
"Hey... do I know you?" said the young man, squinting at him. "You look really familiar."

Arcade blanked, his traitorous mouth refusing to help. _Knife, shove the burner off the table, make a distraction, get ready--_  
  
"I know! You're Sargent Boone's friend, right?" He snapped his fingers, pleased with putting an identity to a face.  
  
Arcade imperceptibly sagged against the bench, trying to keep the naked relief from flooding his face. "Oh, yes. That's me. Craig's friend. His good, good friend."  
  
"Then it's nice to finally meet you, sir. Are you joining us tomorrow night? I don't know if Sarge has invited you yet, but you're more than welcome to join us down at the Union. It's my girls birthday and there's a--"  
  
Ty coughed politely yet pointedly, cutting off the flow of words before it could turn into a raging torrent. "Didn't you have a reason for looking for the doctor, son?"  
  
"Oh! Yessir. One of our charges has taken sick, ma'am. Sarge says it's nothing more than eating bad eggs, but if you could come and take a--"  
  
This time it was Angela's turn to interrupt. "If you've got the caps, I've got the time. I don't take that NCR funny money either."  
  
"Yes ma'am. And no ma'am, no paper money. I'm not carrying cash now, but I'll arrange to get your fee in caps."  
  
She gave him a hard look despite already reaching for her travelling bag, knowing by weight and feel if it was stocked and ready to go. "I'll take my fee today, if you don't mind. That bear on your hat isn't a line of credit."  
  
Arcade stifled a slightly hysterical urge to laugh, hiding his grin as he turned back to the table to rescue his Broc flower stew before it overcooked. The mix was edging towards overcooked, not quite there but awfully close. He made a note to taste it once it cooled, willing to submit himself to the bitter, acrid taste of stewed florals rather than run the risk of making a foul batch of raw powder.  
  
"--walked him back to his apartment. Sarge shoved him into the bathroom before he could puke all over his shoes again, said he'd park him in the tub 'til you got there." There was a blessed moment of silence as he gallantly offered to carry Angela's bag, earning an audible chuckle from Ty. "Mr, uh…?"  
  
"John," supplied Angela, glaring at his back.  
  
"John, right. We'll be at the Union. You're more than welcome to join us for a--"  
  
"--For a trip to examine a man probably drowning in his own vomit in a bathtub," Angela smoothly interrupted. "Time is wasting, soldier boy."  
  
Arcade bit the inside of his cheek, desperately trying to stop laughing. "I'm not playing nurse. You have fun prescribing fluids and rest; I'm going to finish prepping this next batch of florals before you come back and shout at me some more."  
  
"Fine," Angela shot back, one hand already on the door. "Go ahead, miss all the fun. Lock up if you leave early."  
  
Ty closed the door behind them, shaking his head as the young soldier again offered to carry her doctors bag. "Fella is so damp behind the ears, I'm surprised he doesn't leave a trail of wet behind him."  
  
"What he has in moisture, he lacks in chin."  
  
"Mean. I like it." Ty dragged out a stool on the far side of the table and took a seat, watching Arcade slice and prep another batch of flowers with something approaching avid interest. After a while he cleared his throat, fingertips drumming on the tabletop. "John?"  
  
Arcade put down his knife, the steel making an audible click as he set it onto the glass cutting board. He sat up straight and folded his arms firmly across his chest, already on edge at the tone in Ty's voice. "That sounds ominous. Am I going to hate what you're about to say?"  
  
"Maybe. Maybe not. Angela told you about us, right? Where we come from?"  
  
"Some of it. I’m guessing she’s said a few words about me as well.” He rolled his neck, trying to shift the creeping tension he could feel starting to gather at the top of his spine. “If you're about to pull your badge on me, don't even bother."

A conciliatory hand was raised. "Retired means retired, John. It's just that you saw that pipsqueak kid behind me and looked like you were two steps away from jumping out the window."  
  
Arcade stayed silent. In the background a new song started to play, a jaunty melody of clarinets and brass that completely mismatched the mood in the room.  
  
"…and I don't know why, and probably don't want to know the details. Angela said you fair well twitched out of your skin when she told you I used to be a Ranger." Ty sighed. "You seem like a nice fellow, John. It's just that the nice ones are usually the ones to watch."  
  
"I know what you're angling at, Ty." He reached over to switch off the burner, watching the bright blue flame fade to gold before being extinguished. "Fine. Honesty for what given value of honesty I'm willing to give you. It's… political. Nothing violent. Nothing horrible. Just politics."  
  
"Politics don't mean much to me," said Ty quietly. "I only care if you're a danger to my wife."  
  
"Of course I'm not." He laid both hands on the table, palms down, and took a calming breath. "Please don't ask for my name or where I'm from, because I think you already know that _I_ know that I'm not going to tell you. But you have my word that I'm only a danger to myself. And my dignity."  
  
"Did you kill a man?"  
  
Arcade sighed. The blunt questions always stung the most. "Dozens. No one who wasn't drawing a bead on me first though, or planning on hauling me to the nearest stockade. I didn't rape anyone or side with the enemy or try to kill the president or anything else on your list either. I'm just--" he paused, searching for the right word. "--unfortunate. Always walking under the wrong stars, if you want to get all tribal about it."  
  
Ty gave him a long unreadable look. "Angela likes you," he said eventually, "And she's a good judge of character. Like I said, I'm retired and I ain't planning on putting that badge on again any time soon."  
  
"I can't begrudge you for looking after your family," Arcade said, picking up his knife and scoring a line deep into the heart of another flower. "I'm fine, Ty. I'm harmless. I hope I can say the same for you."  
  
"I don't have a reason to say otherwise. Is there a bounty on you?"   
  
Arcade looked over the rim of his glasses, his knife stilled. "Money tends to yank people out of retirement," he said conversationally.  
  
Ty just chuckled and pushed his stool back enough that he could reach the computer terminal in the corner, hitting a key and causing the upbeat jazz song to restart. "Always liked this song."  
  
"I liked it until this conversation started." There wasn't much acid behind his words. "I can't help but notice you avoided answering my not-question."  
  
"About what it'd take to make me go back and take money from the bear? There aren't enough caps in the world, John." His fingers kept drumming a beat on the table, every line in his body radiating relaxation despite the bite in his words. "I've got everything I need right here. I'm not willing to go back on the past, god, forty years just to earn a quick buck. Besides, you didn't answer yourself."  
  
"Fine. Fine, fine, fine. Two thousand NCR dollars, ten years ago."   
  
Ty whistled. "Bet you're worth three times that now. More even."  
  
"Yes, thank you," he said archly. "You're not exactly helping me regret saying anything."   
  
Arcade scraped the dismembered flowers off the chopping board and wiped it clean, glancing at his watch to see whether it was worth starting a fresh batch. The sun was hot on his legs, bathing the room in a warm golden light. Four in the afternoon, a good time to buy a loaf of afternoon bread and something warm to eat, maybe a bottle of something tongue-numbing if he planned on sleeping well tonight.

Ty slid off his stool, circling the long way around the table to clap Arcade on the shoulder as he passed, his gesture hinting at nothing but friendliness. He paused at the door, patting at his pockets and frowning.  
  
"Did I leave my keys on the bench?"  
  
"You didn't have them with you." Arcade watched him warily, like maybe he was only a split-second away from wrestling Arcade to the ground and cuffing him after all. "So," he started hesitantly. "So how much am I going to regret telling you about this? About me?"

Ty just laughed. "You think you're the first one? There are dozens of you out there, John. Mostly I find 'em out working the fields with me, not sharing their brains with Angela, but still. I'd be a rich man many times over if I cared enough to shake down every two-bit refugee running like Shady Sands was doing a March to the Sea at his heels. You've given me your word that you're no danger to my wife, and – no offence – I could snap you like a bent branch if you tried anything on me."  
  
Arcade relaxed for the first time since Ty had entered the lab. "No offence taken."  
  
The glass door squeaked along its tracks as Ty pushed it open, the startled squall of insects temporarily filling the room. "Trust who you want, John. You've got my word. You've got Angela. If you want to worry about the real knives at your back, I'd be cautious of your friend in uniform."  
  
"You mean Boone?" said Arcade, more surprised than he let on. "You know him?"  
  
"We've spoken a few times," replied Ty. "Stick around in one spot for long enough and you end up talking to everyone. I'm just saying you might want to limit your words when he's in earshot. The ones under the flag tend to have the... hardest views. I'd know. It's taken me years to break mine."  
  
 _I know_ , Arcade wanted to say. _I know all about Boone. I know so much about that idiot you wouldn't believe me if I told you half of it._  
  
Instead he just made a show of standing up and gathering his dirty knife and board together, making more noise than strictly needed. "I'll bear that in mind," he said eventually, filling the dead air before he blurted out something a little too personal.

Ty nodded, satisfied that his warning was at least superficially heeded. He reminded Arcade to lock up and to have a nice night before he strolled back to the small, comfortable house he and Angela had shared for over half their lives.  
  
The cooled Broc flower paste had overcooked after all, a foul, gag-inducing dab on Arcade's tongue confirming what his eyes had missed when cooking it. He kept it anyway, covering the jar carefully and storing it in the back of the refrigerator with a large ATTN ANGELA DO NOT USE note taped to the lid.  
  
There's nothing wrong be with being prepared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ty - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Ty  
> Angela - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Angela_%28Van_Buren%29


	8. Chapter 8

The Union cafe in town might be a charming little bolthole with generous portions and an endless supply of gently sweating jugs of water, but the Union hotel, far out in the outskirts of town as it was possible to go without getting your boots dusty, was another animal entirely.

If the presence of a heavily armed bouncer at the door didn't give away the quality of the clientele, the working girls perched along the upstairs porch, chain-smoking and catcalling anyone within earshot on the street certainly gave the place a certain _je ne sais quoi._ It was a terrible place, a den of sin and depravity in an ocean of clean-cut sobriety. The drinks were cheap and unwatered, the bar fights brief yet memorable and spending time there was practically an ironclad guarantee not to run into any of the merchants from town.

Arcade loved the place with something rapidly approaching pie-eyed sentimentality.  
  
_All the fun I used to make myself miss out on_ , he'd thought as he'd taken the front steps two at a time, stopping only to allow himself to be patted down by the huge supermutant bouncer. _I should've lowered my standards and indulged in my taste for the terrible when I was younger and more flexible._  
  
It hadn't been hard to find the party. All he had to do was follow the raucous laughter and shouted conversation to a nook at the back of the bar, crammed shoulder to elbow with a mix of strangers and, mercifully, people he knew other than Boone and his little weak-chinned progeny. He'd been denied a graceful entrance though, not after Boone had spotted him first and slung an arm over Arcade's shoulder to introduce him to the group with only a slight stumble on his name.

Boone was already three sheets to the wind with flushed cheeks and a definite sway to his step, edging as close to loud and boisterous as anyone had ever seen him. Whatever had passed a few nights previously had been forgiven or forgotten, and Arcade didn't think it prudent to find out which one was most applicable.  
  
The young soldier - Dan, Arcade thought, Dan with no chin - had punched far above his weight when it came to his girlfriend. Peggy was a pretty strawberry blonde with a tiny gap between her front teeth. She was pure Utah with a bloodline stretching past Vault 70, and despite rolling her eyes as someone further down the table hooted about her father despairing of her wayward behaviour – _and he only knew where his darling angel was tonight, Peggy!_ – she still blushed like a schoolgirl when Arcade gently teased her about walking on the wild side with a soldier boy.  
  
"Wow," said Dan later as he stood behind Arcade's elbow at the crush by the bar, the bartender still glancing back over his shoulder and smiling to himself as he bumped the doc's order to the top of the queue. "Wow. You made my Peggy _and_ the bartender blush with barely a, y'know, word. You're really good with people, you know that?"  
  
"I know," said Arcade. "It's my curse." No need to tell the kid that he was only good at talking to drunk people in rooms loud enough that he couldn't be heard.

* * *

Arcade grinned and rechalked the pool cue, listening to the rapidly escalating argument at his elbow as he cast a speculative eye over the table. Stripes were clustered at one end, a thicket of solids making a clean shot nearly impossible.  
  
"...white ball off the table isn't a trick shot," Boone said, the beer bottle in his hand coming dangerously close to airborne as he emphatically made his point. "S'just being shit at aiming. Two shot penalty."  
  
"Listen! I don't know what kinda bullshit Junktown rules you play by, but here you just add a ball back to the table. That's fair." Jonas, an ironmonger from the city outskirts, folded his arms and looked beseechingly at Arcade for support.  
  
He shook his head with a small smile, unwilling to get involved. Jonas was sweet, equally married to his work and the genial nightkin that manned the forge at night, and he appealed to the heavens before taking a risk and appealing to Arcade's fiscal side and offering him a discount to join his team in this useless argument about poolhall rules.   
  
"Two shot penalty," said Boone obstinately. "Can't just go making up new rules. Hey, Gannon. You're impartial. Tell this guy he's wrong."  
  
Arcade calmly put down the chalk and for a fleeting moment indulged himself in a fantasy of choking Boone to death. The prospect was far too tempting, even with a possible audience of a two-hundred head crowd. Rather he shrugged it off and glanced theatrically over each shoulder.

"I assume you're talking to me?" If his tone had been any blander, it would've been aural hominy.  
  
Boone looked at him like he'd sprouted a second head. "Who else would I be talking to?"  
  
"Well," said Arcade, emphasising his words as if he was addressing a small, slow child, "It's just that you called me someone else's name." He paused. "A name that's _not mine_."  
  
A hazy, drunk realisation bloomed slowly over Boone's face. "Oh, shit. Sorry. You, uh... reminded me of someone. From years back."  
  
_You goddamn idiot._  
  
"Really?" said Arcade dryly, edging around the table to line up his shot. "And you confused me with him? He must be both devastatingly handsome and incredibly good at billiards."  
  
"Eh," said Boone, the argument about forfeits and penalty shots now forgotten completely, Jonas rolling his eyes and stumping off for another beer, calling back that someone could take his turn. "Wouldn't go that far." He drained his drink and watched Arcade take his shot, somehow bending the laws of physics to send a striped ball rocketing off the cushion and into a far pocket. "The only thing I've seen him do with a pool table didn't involve any pants."

Arcade didn't bother to hide his cringe, just let the cue slip through his hands as he took the long way around the table to set up his next shot. "I wouldn't advertise that too loudly," he said _sotto voce_. "Else I could 'accidentally' slip about Sgt Boone getting enough friction burns from pool table felt to spend an entire day face-down with his back covered in healing salve." He glanced along the length of the table and made his point with a hard shot, sending balls skittering across the table. "I'm sure that'd do your reputation a world of good."  
  
"Are you two still playing? Gosh, you're slow!"  
  
Peggy stepped into the alcove, balancing a glass of wine as she made a show of smoothing her sundress down. Her cheeks were flushed and Dan, an ever-attentive shadow at her heels, was an indiscretion all by himself if his split-melon grin was anything to go by.  
  
"Can't rush winning," said Arcade, leaning against the table with as much louche insolence as he could muster. "Can't rush the good things, can you Dan?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Your sergeant and I were just having quite the conversation about pool tables. Did you know he was once f--"  
  
"Shit," said Boone in a rush. "I'm dry up." He made a show of shaking his empty beer bottle. "Better fix that right away."  
  
"Looks like you're taking over, Dan," said Arcade pleasantly, handing the cue across the table with a flourish. "You're losing rather badly. Your sergeant might know a thing or two about pool tables, but actually playing isn't one of them."  
  
Boone steered clear of Arcade for the rest of the night, the waves of prickly irritation radiating from Arcade any time he inserted himself into a conversation no doubt helping to keep him at a good distance. Last drinks had been called by the time Arcade made his excuses to end the evening, the birthday girl giggling at his whiskers as he gallantly planted a birthday kiss on her cheek.  
  
"You'll have to drop by for dinner some evening, Mr Hansen."  
  
"Possibly," he said, shrugging on his jacket and habitually patting at his pockets to check for his keys. "It's been too long since I've had something homemade."  
  
"You're welcome any time," said Peggy, her cheeks pink with wine. "This much time away from your wife and her cooking can't do a grown man any good."  
  
"Ah," he said, stuck for something to say. "Well."  
  
"Peggy's good at preventing old bachelors going feral from too much time away from home," said Boone, sliding out of the booth. "I'd be eating over the sink if she and Dan didn't take pity on me every now and then." He tossed his jacket over his arm and gave Arcade a knowing look. "Guessing you could do with a little homemaking yourself."  
  
"Well," he said again, stalling for time and making a hash of it. "I am getting sick of spending my evenings sitting in diners with only you and your conversation for company."  
  
Boone ignored him. "Peggy, happy birthday. Dan, don't forget the start time tomorrow."  
  
"1020, Sarge." Arcade privately thought that the chances of Dan even making it home were slim, let alone fronting up for a morning duty. For someone blessed with a negative chin and a spine you could count through his shirt, he'd sunk a prodigious amount of cheap cider, the particular cheap kind that returned the next morning wearing steelcapped boots.  
  
He 'n Boone made their goodbyes with a minimum of fuss, stepping out into the warm night air and making bland, middle-aged comments about how smoky it was inside and how pleasant the night was.

Civility reigned until almost the end of the block when, finally out of sight of the huge bouncer lurking outside the hotel, Boone suckerpunched Arcade fair in the stomach.


End file.
